Emma D'Arcy, Nick Frost and Samson Kayo are the heroes of the horror comedy "Truth Seekers".

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Colin Hutton / Amazon Prime Video / Stolen Pictures

  • Truth Seekers

    , the horror comedy from Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, is available this Friday on Amazon Prime Video.

  • Truth Seekers

    follows the adventures of a group of ghost hunters.

  • At the Canneseries festival, Nick Frost told

    20 Minutes

    how he had managed to find the right balance between humor and horror.

The perfect horror comedy for Halloween! 

Truth Seekers

, available this Friday on Amazon Prime Video, will sometimes make you scream with laughter and sometimes hide under the blanket.

At the helm of this paranormal farce in eight episodes, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the hilarious duo of the “Blood and Ice Cream” trilogy (

Shaun of the Dead

,

Hot Fuzz

and

The Last Pub before the end of the world

) and Nat Saunders, the creator of the BBC's massive viral hit

Misery Bear.

How did the trio manage to strike the balance between humor and horror?

In

Truth Seekers

, Gus (Nick Frost) works for Smyle, a company responsible for installing or repairing the Internet for its users.

His boss, Dave (Simon Pegg), sticks him a new colleague, Elton John (Samson Kayo), although Gus prefers to operate alone.

A story of ghosts and mourning

For good reason, this broadband specialist actually spends his time filming ghost appearances across the United Kingdom and sharing them on social networks.

Any resemblance to 

Ghostbusters

is obviously not accidental.

“Gus is a good man who suffered a truly terrible loss when his wife passed away.

We will discover later that it was not until Emily's death that he became interested in unexplained phenomena, ”explains Nick Frost, whom

20 Minutes

interviewed via Zoom as part of the Canneseries festival.

While tracking down ghosts in Britain, this "big, gruff badger" probably secretly hopes to stumble upon his late wife's, a way for him to "cope with grief."

“Maybe there is another dimension that allows us to see a loved one one last time, or maybe we are just afraid of dying,” comments the co-creator of the series.

A common passion for the paranormal

Like Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in The

X-Files

, the two technicians will investigate the paranormal phenomena they witness.

Thrills and jumpscares guaranteed.

“I have always liked to be afraid.

My mom and her sisters were gossiping all the time about someone who had seen a ghost or some weird person who had come back from the dead or someone who had been beheaded, ”recalls Nick Frost.

A passion for the paranormal that he has shared for a long time with his lifelong accomplice: “When you meet Simon Pegg when you are around 20, you share a lot of points of view, you watch the same films, you like the

X-Files

and you don't have a girlfriend, you spend much of your weekends driving to a lost 13th century graveyard somewhere in Essex and sitting down hoping a ghost shows up.

That's how the idea for the show was born, ”says Nick Frost.

If Nick Frost masters the codes of the genre so well, he owes it surprisingly to religion: “My parents were Catholics, which means they drank a lot on weekends.

In return, I was allowed to watch any horror movie I could find, ”he says, citing

The Exorcist

,

Poltergeist

,

Phantasm

and

The Curse

.

An Unexpected Comic Element, Malcolm McDowell

Geek Gus lives with his father, Richard.

The latter is played by Malcolm McDowell, the eternal Alex of Clockwork

Orange

, who brings a rather unexpected comic touch to the whole.

“I was a little nervous about meeting Malcolm McDowell, I've always been a huge fan and he's a fantastic actor.

But you know, as a producer, there is always this fear that someone will come and break the atmosphere on set, ”says Nick Frost.

Malcolm McDowell quickly reassured producer Nick Frost: “He's lively and incredible with the dialogue.

He is a great improviser.

He comes and says, "How about we try this?"

I spent a lot of time watching him play.

You can't really teach what Malcolm McDowell gives off, he's just fantastic!

"

A teasing bromance

Humor also springs up through Gus's relationship with his colleague Elton.

"Elton unconsciously challenges him and begins to bring him out of his shell," Nick Frost sums up.

They could have hated each other at first and loved each other as they went along, but we wanted to write a story where the two guys love each other straight away and get along well.

I like this kind of relationship where you meet someone and it immediately sticks.

"

If Gus doesn't seem to be afraid of anything, on the contrary, Elton is very fearful.

"Just like Samson Kayo," Nick Frost laughs.

They tease each other, it's kind of a flirtation between these two guys, a platonic romance.

"

A balance between humor and horror

The secret of the creators of

Truth Seekers

to find the balance between humor and horror?

“We tried to write believable characters as human beings.

So that if you believe and love these characters, when you go with them on an adventure, when they are afraid, the audience tends to be afraid.

And when they laugh or make a joke, you laugh with them, ”concludes Nick Frost.

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